head to head · open source
cilium vs OpenObserve
cilium has 25,759 GitHub stars, 4,207 forks, 1,085 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenObserve has 22,699 stars, 1,174 forks, 598 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cilium leads on adoption by 13% (25,759 vs 22,699 stars). cilium is written in Go under Apache-2.0; OpenObserve is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. cilium has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, OpenObserve 5%. cilium was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| cilium | OpenObserve | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 23K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cilium if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick OpenObserve if
- You want the OpenObserve feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and OpenObserve fits your workflow better
About cilium
.. raw:: html Cilium is a networking, observability, and security solution with an eBPF based dataplane. It provides a simple flat Layer 3 network with the ability to span multiple clusters in either a native routing or overlay mode. It is L7 protocol aware and can enforce network policies on L3 L7 using an identity based security model that is decoupled from network addressing. Cilium implements distributed load balancing for traffic between pods and to external services, and is able to fully replace kube proxy, using efficient hash tables in eBPF, allowing for almost unlimited scale. It also supports advanced…
read the full cilium overview →
About OpenObserve
Open source Datadog alternative for logs, metrics, traces, and frontend monitoring. Modern observability platform: 10x easier, 140x lower storage cost, high performance, petabyte scale. Cloud · Documentation · Slack · Quickstart OpenObserve (O2) is a cloud native observability platform for logs, metrics, traces, analytics, Real User Monitoring (RUM), and AI/LLM observability. It's a cost effective alternative to Datadog, Splunk, and Elasticsearch for teams that need full observability without the complexity or cost — with Parquet columnar storage and an S3 native design that cuts storage costs by up to 140x…
read the full OpenObserve overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cilium or OpenObserve more popular?
cilium has 25,759 GitHub stars and OpenObserve has 22,699. cilium has the larger community by that measure.
Are cilium and OpenObserve free?
Both are open source. cilium is licensed under Apache-2.0 and OpenObserve under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cilium and OpenObserve?
cilium is written in Go and OpenObserve in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, cilium or OpenObserve?
Choose cilium if you want the larger community (25,759 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose OpenObserve if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.